Chatsworth Avenue Elementary School
Art Appreciation
Fall, 2011
Stuart Davis: Biography
The following biographical synopsis is provided to the Parent Volunteers for their own use in
familiarizing themselves with Stuart Davis’ life and work. Please note, some of the images
included in this document differ from those we will be sharing with the children.
The information meant to be shared directly with the students is provided in another document
(also available on line) which will be attached to the posters which will be used and discussed in
the classrooms.
Introduction:
Stuart Davis (1894-1964) was a progressive and experimental early American modernist
painter. He was known for his “ashcan” pictures portraying scenes of daily life in New York's
poorer neighborhoods which he produced in the beginning years of the 20th century. He is best
remembered for his jazz influenced, proto pop art paintings of the 1940s and 1950s, which were
bold, brash, and colorful.
Davis adapted the techniques of Cubism, expressionism, surrealism, and various other
movements in modern art to create his own individual style. Davis’ use of vibrant colors and flat,
graphic shapes produced lively canvases that convey the tempo of modern city life and his
personalized interpretations of his environment. Dynamic, playful, and original, Davis’s paintings
display a distinctly American aesthetic. He famously said, “I paint what I see in America, in other
words I paint the American scene”.
His use of contemporary subject matter such as cigarette packages, spark plug advertisements
and the contemporary American landscape make him a proto-Pop artist influencing later artists
such as Wayne Thiebaud, Andy Warhol, David Hockney and Roy Lichtenstein.
For Davis, every object played an important role in perceiving the modern world, right down to
the eggbeaters, gas pumps, matchbooks, and billboards used and seen in everyday life. His
subjects come right out of the Jazz nightclubs that he visited and the metropolitan streets of
New York City that he enjoyed. Even the specific language of American life during the 1940s
and 1950s comes through in his paintings. Phrases such as “The Mellow Pad” and “Swing
Landscape” are apt titles for his compositions of squiggly lines and flashy colors.
By painting the jargon and images of American life, Davis was one of the rare painters of the
20th century who successfully transformed a European style of painting (Cubism) into
something truly American. However, by the time the Abstract Expressionists took the New York
art world by storm in the 1950s, Davis’ art struggled to maintain its modernist edge. Another
decade would pass before Davis’ visionary presence would be cemented in art history. In
the1960s, artists of the Pop Art movement admired his attention to mass culture. Long before
painters such as Andy Warhol and Ed Ruscha, Davis was painting soap boxes, billboards and
gas pumps with a tongue-in-cheek wit that was ahead of his time.
Key Biographical Notes:
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On December 7, 1892, Stuart Davis was born to two Philadelphia artists.
His mother, Helen Stuart Foulke, was a prominent sculptor who exhibited at the annual
exhibitions of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and the Philadelphia Museum of
Art.
His father, Edward Wyatt Davis, was a newspaper art editor who employed many of the
period’s great American Realists. In the company of his parents and their famous artist
friends, the young Davis grew up surrounded by art.
At the age of 16, Davis began studying with painter Robert Henri at the artist’s school in
New York City. Henri (1865 –1929) was an American painter, teacher and a leading
figure of the Ashcan School in art which is defined as a realist artistic movement that
came into prominence in the United States during the early twentieth century, best
known for works portraying scenes of daily life in New York's poorer neighborhoods.
For the next three years, Davis remained at Henri’s school, where he learned above all,
to capture “life in the raw.”
Examples of Henri’s Work:
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Davis painted the New York urbanscape in the manner of his teacher as exemplified by
his Chinatown (1912), set in Lower Manhattan (below).
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In 1913, he was invited to participate and attend the International Exhibition of Modern
Art (also known as the Armory Show). He was one of the youngest exhibitors. Davis was
“enormously excited by the show” and was deeply affected by the post-Impressionist
works by Gaugin, Van Gogh, and Matisse that were on display. Upon his return from the
exhibition, the young artist vowed to become a “modern” artist stating, “The Armory
Show was the greatest shock to me—the greatest single influence I have experienced in
my work.”
After the Armory Show, Davis redeveloped his style by loosening up his brushwork and
perspective.
Shortly after, he held his first solo-exhibition which was then followed by a string of
shows at the Whitney Studio Club.
In 1922, he became a member of the Modern Artists of America. As an established,
“modern” artist, Davis gained entrance into the circles of the New York avant-garde.
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In 1927, Davis encountered a crossroads in his career when he mounted an electric fan,
a rubber glove and an eggbeater to a table. The Eggbeater Series (one example,
below), was then debuted at the Valentine Gallery.
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Upon the success of the show, benefactor Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (founder in 1931
of the Whitney Museum of American Art) urged Davis to travel to Paris. With her
financial help, he was able to go abroad for a year with his girlfriend Bessie Chosak.
Once in Paris, he found a studio in the Montparnasse district, painted many Paris street
scenes, and married Bessie Chosak.
In 1929, Davis returned from Paris to a changed New York. His mentor Robert Henri had
died that year and the Great Depression was at hand. Amidst these hardships, his wife,
Bessie Chosak Davis, died in 1934.
Like many Americans of his time, Davis also suffered financially from the Great
Depression. When President Roosevelt announced the debut of the first federally
supported art program in 1933, Davis was one of the first artists to sign up.
Between 1933-39, he completed several government commissioned murals under the
auspices of the Public Works of Art Program (PWAP), the Federal Art Project (FAP), and
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the Works Progress Administration (WAP). With the financial support of the government,
Davis was able to continue his exploration in formalism and American subject matter.
Although Davis' own work did not share the subject matter expressed by the majority of
the WPA/FAP artists, who were moved by the times to voice social protest in a more
factual manner, his creative output, like theirs, was informed by an emphasis on
American subject matter. Along with his fellow printmakers, Davis held the widespread
sentiment that prints, which existed in multiples and were inexpensive, represented an
inherently democratic "people's art."
During the final three decades of his life, Davis created only a handful of prints, all
bearing the artist's distinctive exploration of pure color. Undertaken when Davis has the
least money, his last few efforts to produce prints represented, in part, an attempt to
attract income.
Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, he taught at the Art Students League and at the New
School for Social Research to supplement his income and promote his ideas on art
theory.
By the 1950s, Stuart Davis was already a fixed icon in American art. He was enjoying
international success and married his second wife, Roselle Springer, who would later
give birth to his only child, George Earle. Together, Davis and his wife would frequent
local jazz nightclubs. Davis, a longtime fan of jazz and swing music, drew inspiration
from the genres and was even friends with famous musicians, such as Duke Ellington.
Stuart Davis continued to enjoy success as an artist well into his later years. He received
honors as a representative of the United States at the Venice Biennale in 1952 and
1954. In addition, he was awarded the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum International
Award in both 1958 and 1960.
On June 24, 1964, he died suddenly from a stroke, leaving behind a legacy of paintings
and a reputation as one of America’s first modernists.
Key Artistic Contributions:
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Davis depiction of his world was purely subjective. After the influential experiences of
participating in the Armory Show of 1913 and a visit to Paris in 1928-29 he introduced a
new note into US Cubism. Using natural forms, particularly forms suggesting the
characteristic environment of American life, he rearranged them into flat poster-like
patterns with precise outlines and sharply contrasting colors (House and Street, Whitney
Museum, New York, 1931, below).
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He later went over to pure abstract patterns, into which he often introduced lettering,
suggestions of advertisements, posters, etc. (Owh! in San Pao, Whitney Museum, 1951,
below).
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The zest and dynamism of such works reflect his interest in jazz. Davis is generally
considered to be the outstanding American artist to work in a Cubist idiom. He made
witty and original use of it and created a distinctive American style, for however abstract
his works became he always claimed that every image he used had its source in
observed reality: `I paint what I see in America, in other words I paint the American
Scene.'
Comparisons:
The originality of his work can best be seen when compared to the artistic work of his
contemporaries:
Thomas Hart Benton (1889 –1975) was an American painter and muralist. Along with Grant
Wood and John Steuart Curry, he was at the forefront of the Regionalist art movement. His fluid,
almost sculpted paintings showed everyday scenes of life in the United States. Though his work
is strongly associated with the Midwest, he painted scores of works of New York City, where he
lived for more than 20 years; Martha’s Vineyard, where he summered for much of his adult life;
the American South; and the American West.
George Wesley Bellows (1882 - 1925) was an American realist painter, known for his bold
depictions of urban life in New York City, becoming, according to the Columbus Museum of Art,
"the most acclaimed American artist of his generation".
Edward Hopper (1882 –1967) was a prominent American realist painter and printmaker. While
most popularly known for his oil paintings, he was equally proficient as a watercolorist and
printmaker in etching. In both his urban and rural scenes, his spare and finely calculated
renderings reflected his personal vision of modern American life.
Charles Ephraim Burchfield (1893 - 1967) was an American painter and visionary artist,
known for his passionate watercolors of nature scenes and townscapes. His paintings are in the
collections of many major museums in the USA and have been the subject of exhibitions at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern
Art as well as other prominent institutions.
Joseph Stella (1877 - 1946) was an Italian-born, American Futurist painter best known for his
depictions of industrial America. He is associated with the American Precisionism movement of
the 1910s-1940s. He was born in Muro Lucano, Italy but came to New York City in 1896. He
studied at the Art Students League of New York under William Merritt Chase. His first paintings
are Rembrandtesque depictions of city slum life. In 1908, he was commissioned for a series on
industrial Pittsburgh later published in The Pittsburgh Survey.
Davis’ Influence:
Stuart was profoundly influential on the pop artists of the second half of the 20th century
including:
Wayne Thiebaud (born 1920) is an American painter whose most famous works are of cakes,
pastries, boots, toilets, toys and lipsticks. He is associated with the Pop art movement because
of his interest in objects of mass culture, although his works, executed during the fifties and
sixties, slightly predate the works of the classic pop artists. Thiebaud uses heavy pigment and
exaggerated colors to depict his subjects, and the well-defined shadows characteristic of
advertisements are almost always included in his work.
Andrew Warhola, Jr. (b. 1928 –1987), known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter,
printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop
art. After a successful career as a commercial illustrator, Warhol became famous worldwide for
his work as a painter, avant-garde filmmaker, record producer, author, and member of highly
diverse social circles that included Bohemian street people, distinguished intellectuals,
Hollywood celebrities and wealthy patrons.
David Hockney, CH, RA, (b.1937) is an English painter, draughtsman, printmaker, stage
designer and photographer, who is based in Bridlington, Yorkshire and Kensington, London. An
important contributor to the Pop art movement of the 1960s, he is considered one of the most
influential British artists of the twentieth century.
Davis’ Biographical Timeline:
 1892 Born December 7 in Philadelphia, PA
 1901 Family moves to East Orange, NJ
 1909 Enrolls at the Robert Henri School of Art
 1910 Has first exhibition with Independent Artists
 1912 Leaves the Henri School and opens a studio in Hoboken
 1913 Exhibits five watercolors in the Armory Show
 1914 Spends the summer in Provincetown, MA
 1915 Summers in Gloucester, MA
 1917 First solo-exhibition opens at the Sheridan Square Gallery in New York
 1918 Serves in World War I as a mapmaker
 1919 Travels to Cuba for a month
 1922 Begins Cubist still lifes series
 1923 Travels to Santa Fe, NM
 1925 First museum, solo-exhibition takes place
 1927 First exhibition at Edith Gregor Halpert’s Downtown Gallery
 1929 Marries Bessie Chosak
 1932 Teaches at the Art Students League
 1932 Bessie Chosak Davis dies
 1933 Joins Public Works Project
 1934 Joins Artists’ Unions. Opens studio and apartment on Seventh Avenue
 1935 Joins the W.P.A. Federal Art Project
 1937 Completes murals for W.P.A. Marries Roselle Springer
 1939 Forced to leave W.P.A.
 1940 Teaches at New School for Social Research
 1945 Retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, NY
 1950 Visiting art instructor at Yale University
 1952 Represents the United States at Venice Biennale. Son, George Earl Davis, is born.
 1956 Elected to National Institute of Arts and Letters
 1957 Walker Art Center retrospective tours the U.S.
 1964 Dies of a stroke in New York City
Davis’ Key Awards:
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1944 Prize, Carnegie Institute
1952-53 Guggenheim Fellow
1945 Medal, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art
1956 Medal, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art
1964 Medal, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art
Collections:
The public collections holding work by Stuart Davis in the New York Tri-State area are:
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Brooklyn Mus e um of Art, NY
Me tropolita n Mus e um of Art, NY
Montcla ir Art Mus e um, NJ
Mus e um of Mode rn Art, NY
Whitne y Mus e um of Ame rica n Art, NY
Ya le Unive rs ity Art G a lle ry, CT
East Coast:
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Art Ga lle ry of the Unive rs ity of Roche s te r, NY
Ca rne gie Mus e um of Art, P itts burgh, P A
Currie r G a lle ry of Art, NH
Hirs hhorn Mus e um a nd S culpture Ga rde n, Wa s hington D.C.
Hyde Colle ction Art Mus e um, NY
J ohns on Mus e um of Art a t Corne ll Unive rs ity, NY
Na tiona l P ortra it Ga lle ry, Washington D.C.
P e nns ylva nia Aca de my of the Fine Arts , P A
P hillips Colle ction, Wa s hington D.C.
P ortla nd Mus e um of Art, ME
S miths onia n Ame rica n Art Mus e um, Wa s hington D.C.
U.S . Libra ry of Congre s s , Wa s hington D.C.
We s tmore la nd Mus e um of American Art, PA
Quotes:
“Reality in art is composed of shapes and colors.”
“An artist who has traveled on a steam train, driven an automobile, or flown in an airplane
doesn't feel the same way about form and space as one who has not.”
“I paint what I see in America, in other words I paint the American scene.”